The biggest news in Linna's world right now is that she LOVES to draw. She spends hours each day drawing - mostly girls and kitties, and babies. They're recognizable, with sometimes odd accoutrements, like the family portrait today of us all swinging on trapezes, with balls of yarn hanging off our feet. Sometimes the people have kitty ears and whiskers, which makes sense, because sometimes Linna does also.

I can't believe she's in her second year of preschool, but it's so. She's happy at Harmony, especially now that she has butterfly rain boots.

She's utterly charming, and often tells me she loves me.

Also, she doesn't participate in classes, I've learned. She did Do Jump camp over the summer, and really just wasn't interested. Then we did a dance class for preschoolers at Laurelhurst - with MIKA, her favoritest person in the world. Each class, she would dance for a while, maybe the first 20 minutes, and then she was done. She would not go back, no matter what the teacher's blandishments. Actually, I wasn't crazy about how the teacher tried to get her to do it, although I guess I understand - basically, it was attempted bribery. "Linna, come dance with me! Otherwise you won't get a sticker at the end of class." To that, Linna basically said, "OK. Maybe I'll dance next week and get a sticker." To be honest, I was a little bit proud that she couldn't be swayed.

Often we have a particular battle: the I-want-to-wear-a-white-dress-with-pink-flowers battle. She has one little dress - from my childhood - that is white with pink roses on it. It's too small. And it has to be washed at times. But she always wants to wear it, or some other pink flowery dress. I had to get a few more so that we weren't fighting about it so much.

The other night we had dinner at Caldera, a local restaurant. We sat upstairs, and had that whole room to ourselves. After we'd ordered, but before the food came, a woman came up to look around, and Linna chatted with her about this and that. As the woman left, she said, "Have a nice dinner!" and Linna said, "But where is our dinner?"

One final tidbit: she loves to talk about babies and often wants me to tell her a story about when she was born, when Ethan was born, when Dylan was born, and when Mika was born. Then we move on to when my cat had kittens. For a while she insisted she had 50,000 kittens in her tummy, ready to be born.

When I got closer I could her whispering: "Shake, shake, shake your body. Shake, shake, shake your body."

Then she made a bunch just like Ethan's - I cut little hearts out of various scrapbooking papers, and they glued them onto square cardstock. I think while they were working on the valentines, Ethan showed her how to write more of her name. On one she wrote "Limm" and on another, "Lnna." The many valentines for me are covered with extra M's for mama. She also drew a birdie on one. The one she made for Jeff has a picture of him on it. He looks a little sad.

At Dan and Carolyn's at Christmas, we learned that Linna loves, loves, loves it when we join hands and sing before a meal. The expression on her face is just so cute - a big grin, sparkly eyes looking from one face to the next as we sing. "Let's hold hands again!" And does she love to sing! The other day Aileah taught the kids the song "Tomorrow," and after work we were all four belting it out.

She knows a few words by sight!

She really does seem much older since she turned 3. She's even begun sleeping in her own bed (the bottom bunk of Ethan's bed), which we outfitted in a lovely pink-and-brown flowered quilt.

I'm sure I've mentioned the soporific (they put me magically to sleep, only to wake up at the very end) Robbie the Robot stories that Jeff used to tell Ethan. Linna gets Rosie the Robot stories, but she's much more dictatorial about what happens in the story. Actually, she doesn't much care about the robot part. As soon as you start, "Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Linna...." she pipes in, "And Mika and Ethan! And three kitties get stuck up a tree! And they hop on a train, and Totoro's tummy says, 'bubbly, bubbly, boop!'" or whatever, and there's your story.

She also started telling Jeff stories about some crickets who live up in the clouds. There's a mommy cricket, a daddy cricket, and some baby crickets. They sleep on the clouds, but sometimes they fall down and do things on the ground. I don't really know all the details.

Jeff's in Seattle, so I biked Ethan to school with both kids in the trailer. Nice going there, but I was kinda sorry on the way home - my legs are tired after our long bike ride on Sunday (12.71 miles, me with Linna in the trailer). Linna carried her lunchbox up the stairs to Ethan's school, then back down again. Then we drove to Harmony (maybe someday I'll bike there too).

She was definitely a little nervous - she was sucking her thumb as we went in, and insisted on washing her hands in the boys' bathroom instead of the girls, I think because there were a bunch of kids in the girls' bathroom. But when we got to the classroom she was so happy. She opened her lunchbox, took out her cup, and went over to get some water with Kristin's help. As she was drinking her water, I went over to say goodbye, and she just gave me a little wave - that was it. A girl who remembers Ethan from last year (Linna's in the same room he was in) came over to talk to Linna, and I slipped out.

When I peeked back in the window, she had gotten a mat out and put it on the table, and was going back to get a puzzle. She looked so cute, and so happy. And so little!

It was very odd to come home to an empty house.

So for most of dinner she wore Ethan's underwear and some flowered shorts. Then the shorts came off, and she put on a pair of big fuzzy green socks from my drawer. They go up to her knees, like leg-warmers. Later, it was Jeff's immense black hightops. And the Nemo underwear.

So Ann wisely cooled it on the Mika visits, and Linna is transformed back into her mostly non-pushing, non-biting self. I felt terrible, though, that I didn't do a little more get-off-your-butt parenting and prevent it from happening - she clearly knew she wasn't supposed to, but I don't exactly expect a 2-year-old to have impulse control. Heck, Ethan doesn't have impulse control all the time either, and he's 6.

The whole thing caused tension and aggression for all - Ethan was more difficult during this time too. So I haven't been the happiest mommy.

But Linna's also insanely cute. They've both gotten way into Totoro again since Mika's back, and Linna in particular loves to pretend that she and Ethan are Mei and Satsuki. One morning they repeatedly said to each other, "I love you, Mei!" "I love you, Satsuki!" There's something really precise about the way Linna says "Satsuki."

She also pretends to read to herself a lot these days, telling the story of the book as well as she remembers it. And she gets that the words on the page say certain things! It's exciting for her.

We visited Harmony last week - she'll be in the same room Ethan was in, with the same teacher. For days before the visit, she wanted to pretend to bring a lunchbox (birdhouse, really) to Harmony. She seems so little to me sometimes, but boy, did she have a good time on our visit. Kristin let her feed the fish, showed her her own hook, and then Linna wanted to do the world puzzle map (the puzzle maps were always among Ethan's favorites too). So Kristin showed her how to get a mat, they did the puzzle, and then Kristin said she was going to show Linna how to roll the mat up, but Linna did it all on her own, and proudly carried it back to its holder. She did several smaller puzzles, as well, and did not want to leave. She starts next week.

So we're waiting for a penny in the poop. Guess we'll have to alert Aileah and Kaya, and also have her stick to the little potty for now.

But the car trip? Not so much fun. The way home was especially challenging by the end. Ethan would be entertained by listening to the soundtrack of High School Musical 2 on Jeff's iPod every few hours - the only downside was, he sang along. Loudly, and with feeling. Actually, it was pretty cute. Then Linna also discovered that she likes the iPod, especially if it's playing a Winnie-the-Pooh story. She looked awfully cute, eyes wide, big headphones on. But by the end, we were getting desperate to keep everyone happy. Ethan was tired, so he kind of put his head down in between the two car seats, but then Linna kept pulling his hair. Yes, we threatened to STOP THIS CAR. It was bad, bad, bad.

There were good moments, too - like when we were playing 20 questions with Ethan, and Linna kept wanting to join in. Her question was always, "Is it a cow?" We giggled. Then I had to giggle even more when I was thinking of a clock, and Ethan kept asking things like, "Can you sit on it?" "Can you throw it?" and I imagined my poor clock getting all beat up.

We were also in California for two big occasions that happened to be a few days apart - my high school reunion (20) and my grandmother's 100th birthday. Both were a good time. On our way down to Carmel to see Jeff's brother and family, we had bagels. I shared mine with Linna, including the lox, 'cause she loves it. Suddenly she said, "What the heck?!? There's fish in my bagel!" That struck as extremely funny (she must have picked the expression up from Ethan, who says, "What the....?" quite often. So she said it again and again. "What the heck? What the heck?"

She's been sick, almost certainly with a UTI. So sad when she woke up at 3 in the morning and kept insisting she had to go potty. She's feeling better now, but it's been a rough few days.

She's been unusually affectionate. She's been giving lots of kisses and hugs, and kept asking for Daddy (Seattle, again). Then on Wednesday she came up to Kaya and said, "I love you, Kaya!" Sven was on Kaya's lap, and Linna extended her love to him, giving him a hug and a kiss, which he probably didn't like all that much.

There's a playground next to the pool, and when Jeff was gone, we played for a while there after class. Last time, Ethan was happily swinging, and Linna was climbing up on the play structure towards the slide, when suddenly she squatted and peed. Oops! She had JUST GONE before we got dressed after swimming, but oh well! It made a nice little shower down onto the ground, but fortunately no one was underneath her. There was another mom there with her two-year-old, and she seemed a little shocked by the turn of events, but oh well - what can you do? We had to leave fairly quickly after that.

Mandy was over recently, telling us about various dramatic episodes in her life, and I responded with the pee-on-the-play-structure story, as pretty much indicative of the kind of drama in my life these days. It's not much, but I guess it's more interesting than work drama, at least. Or at least more amusing.

She singy sings all the time. Often we can't tell exactly what she's singing about, but it's very amusing and done with feeling. She also loves to tell Ethan what to do - she does or says something, then says, "Bubba do it now!" and he usually does. He gets tired of it and says in exasperation, "LINNA! I don't want to play that game anymore!" But he still does it if she says, "Bubba do it now!"